Spring School 2017

Topics

Uncertainty is a pervasive feature of human experience. This fact is reflected in a large number of scientific research on uncertainty. It inspires a still intensifying research activity in Economics, Mathematics, Political Science and Philosophy – to name just a few disciplines. With humanity facing big risks like climate change, demographic change and state deficits, this research is highly needed.

It is a defining feature of risks as such that they necessitate research from different disciplines to get a grip on their complex nature. Risks tend to cross-cut across different spheres of individual lives and the social, economic and political world, making an interdisciplinary approach useful. Therefore, in order to appreciate all the various aspects of a certain risk one has to engage with all the different disciplines investigating the risk in question. But this is a highly demanding task. No one can possibly be an expert in all the disciplines covering the field of risk research.

Aim

The aim of this workshop is to overcome this challenge as far as possible. It achieves this aim by asking its participants to present their work on risk not only to peer investigators of their discipline but by challenging them to present their work also to those from other disciplines. The assumption is that, to give an example, social science and philosophical research on climate change can benefit hugely from a first-hand presentation of how mathematicians and specialists in computational sciences model climate change.